The Major League Baseball season is about one month old, and while the competition on the field is as compelling as ever, the story is in the stands. Actually, the story is what's not in the stands: paying customers, especially in several high-profile and higher-priced new ballparks, notably the brand new Yankee Stadium.

The every day nature of its season results in the perception that few of the games are particularly meaningful. When the country's discretionary income swirls down the drain, that extra baseball game or two is quickly dispensed with. Whereas the short season and week-long buildup inoculates football from those same pressures, baseball is like a long-running soap opera – the fan can drop in occasionally and still get the gist.

Of course, baseball has weathered hard times before: the Great Depression, the second world war, Astroturf. The difference today is that the economic blow coincides with a frenzy of stadium construction. Cities from coast to coast, including San Diego, St Louis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Washington, have opened new parks in the past few years. The doubleheader in New York, with the Mets also opening a stadium in Queens in the shadow of the monolith in the Bronx, caps the construction boom.

The two parks also are towering reminders of just how much the world has changed in the past few months. The Mets park is named CitiField, after CitiBank. Other than AIG, it would be hard to be associated with a more noxious brand name. The park itself, while certainly an upgrade over the cement-laden dump it replaces, Shea Stadium, has been criticised for it's over-embrace of Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers, a team that fled New York for the southern California sunshine over half a century ago. The Mets history and legacy is scarcely mentioned. But no amount of nostalgic touches can wallpaper over the giant "Citi" signs that dot the edifice.

An hour away by subway is the gargantuan new Yankee Stadium. The train ride there is about the only affordable aspect of the place. The lower bowl of the stadium can be accessed only by forking over ludicrous sums of money to the ticket office. The initial price tag: between $325 and $2,500!

Unsurprisingly, vast swaths of empty seats marred the otherwise glorious vistas of the spanking new stadiums' opening weeks. Worse, they are the seats closest to the field, meaning the lack of humanity couldn't help but be noticed by the television cameras.

On opening day, clueless commissioner Bud Selig pronounced every seat in the stadium "affordable". In the heyday of Wall Street profits and corporate spending, perhaps. Not now. The PR nightmare and the loss of expected revenue has already forced the Yankees to bow to pressure and lower prices. Nevertheless, the stadium is an instant dinosaur, a monument to an era of wealth now wrenchingly gone.

The exorbitant prices put inordinate pressure on the home team to win every game 11-0, which of course they cannot. At least the Yankees are good, even though they've begun the season with a few stinkbombs (amid the grandeur of opening day, the Yankees were blasted 10-2).

Similar problems exist in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, sites of the most beautiful new parks in the league. But neither the Pirates nor the Reds have fielded winners since the early 1990s. So while both have interesting teams this year with good young players, they perform in front of half-empty houses on a nightly basis.

But this recession is hampering even the best franchises in the baseball-lovingest cities. The Boston Red Sox resisted tearing down historic Fenway Park and have been rewarded with complete sell-outs, as the team has won two championships in five years. But the owners say they may not sell out this season, a shocking development given the intimacy of Fenway and the undying devotion to the Sox in New England.

Baseball (and pro sports in general) have fallen prey to the same greed and short-sightedness that brought down Wall Street. The average fan was long ago priced out of regular support of his or her team. The spate of stadium construction was spurred on by the need to cater excessively to free-spending corporations that in turn underwrote massive profits.

Baseball certainly never foresaw today's belt-tightening, and definitely didn't prepare for so many of its top corporate partners disappearing altogether or being bought out for pennies on the dollar. But those stadia cannot be unbuilt.

Sure, the game outlasted the Depression. But the experience of attending a game in those days wasn't nearly the wallet-stunner it is today, even adjusting for inflation (no one had to pay $20 for parking, for example). And there wasn't nearly the competition for the entertainment dollar. Hopefully, the sport will learn from the painful days ahead.